← The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 772 | The Making of NT Wright: His Calling, What He Gave Up, His Influences, And His Views on Spiritual Warfare and Demonizing Your Enemies
01:18:20
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A
The Art of Leadership Network.
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B
Each time Paul lists principalities and powers, you know, thrones, dominions, authorities, rulers, et cetera, et cetera. It's just that he is aware of a shadowy world, just behind the veil, as it were, where there are, whether he called them daimonii or whatever, shadowy little figures who are not divine themselves, but they're trying to lure you into the paths of folly and of unfruitfulness for the gospel.
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Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. It's Carrie here, and I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. Well, today, N.T. wright, I am so excited about this. We went way back to his calling, what he gave up to do, what he is doing now, his influences. You know, one of my great concerns is where's the next generation of NT rights coming from? And to do that, you need to understand what made NT Wright who he is. I mean, his books are just. They're going to be read 100 years after his death. So we go back into his whole life story, talk about his views on spiritual warfare, demonizing your enemies, and a whole lot more. So if you're interested in the making of one of the greatest theological minds alive today, you come to the right place and make sure you subscribe. If you want show notes to this, by the way, you can find them at my Art of Leadership Academy. Join over 14,000 leaders who have signed up for free for this leadership Academy. In it, you'll find episodes, really robust discussions, thoughtful discussions, discussions that people like N.T. wright would actually enjoy, not the trash you see online a lot. And I think you'll really enjoy it there. NT Wright, for those of you who may not know who he is or one of those guys who needs no introduction, N.T. wright is the former Bishop of Durham and senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He's one of the world's leading New Testament scholars and the award author of many books, including his latest, the Vision of Ephesians. He's the host of one of the most popular podcasts, Ask NT Write Anything, reaching millions of listeners around the world. And now my conversation with the one and only N.T. wright. Well, Tom, it's so good to talk again. Welcome back to the podcast.
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B
Thank you. It's good to be with you.
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A
Yeah. So I want to go back to a much earlier time in your life as you and I were chatting about. One of the questions I have is how do you become nt? Right? How do you, you know, and obviously God creates unique people, but when you get to your stage, of life. And there is all of this compound learning. And you've written so many books and could probably write them in your sleep with all the reading you've done over the years. I want to go back.
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Decades now. And when was the first time that it twigged in you that you might become a scholar?
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B
Well, that's an interesting question. I didn't know that there was such a thing as scholarship till I was doing my undergraduate degree here at Oxford. And it was the philosophy that really caught me first, though I was really an ancient historian. The degree was a combination of those two. But until I ran into the Oxford scholars who were teaching me and then started to read their books and articles, I hadn't really any idea of how the world of scholarship was and worked. I don't think I gave it any thought at all, let alone theological scholarship. And then it was undergraduate days when, with Christian friends, we started to deb big issues about theodicy, about how justification works, about heaven and hell, whatever it was, and particularly about the meaning of particular biblical passages. That's when I got fixated on the letter to the Romans. Does Romans 7 describe the normal Christian life? Or is this something from which we need to move on, et cetera, et cetera? And it was reading around those things which were kind of urgent existential questions and matters of debate between me and friends, that I realized there was this vast hinterland of commentaries and articles and learned people arguing this way and that. And I just thought, well, this stuff is so important, I need to get in and at least find out what's going on. And then it became like a hobby for me. And I've often said to research students, graduate students, unless you fall in love with the subject you're researching, please don't try and do a PhD because it's hard work. Means, you know, sitting in the library for long hours, beavering away and puzzling about lines of thought that don't seem to be going anywhere. You've really got to want to do it. And I was exactly in that bracket, I really needed to know about this stuff. It had gripped me from my late teens, early 20s, and it was just a question of following through. And then when I realized that there was this whole other larger world of commentaries and articles and learned dictionaries and goodness knows what, then I just aspired to that. I thought, I need get in there, really, so that I can learn. But then gradually, when I started to realize that some of the people who were writing apparently influential things, I thought they've Missed a trick there. Surely that's not what that verse means. And then you're into it, then there's no escape. Unless you, you know, unless you decide to run away to see or go and be an opera singer or something instead, then you're right into it. And I was, and still am.
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A
But of course, definitely you still are.
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B
The thing is, it has changed enormously and now the real debates don't take place in the pages of learned journals. There are still learned journals. I still take one or two. But actually, whereas before a scholar would publish an article and then in a year or 18 months, someone else would publish an article trying to refute it or nuance it or whatever, and there's a very slow process. And you'd go to conferences where people would be trying out the ideas that would turn up in articles. Now it's all online and podcasts and substacks and people doing day by day reports on what they're reading and what they're thinking, and then younger scholars diving into this and so on. And I'm both sorry that I'm not of an age where I can do that, and actually secretly rather glad I preferred the older way. And I'm now nearer 100 than 50. I'm in my late 70s, and I just think, good on you guys. Go for it. I hope it works out. But that's not been my style.
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A
If we were to go back to you at age 6, 8, 10, were you a bookish child? Were you always had your nose in a book? Were you happy? Go lucky. What was. What was the very young Tom Wright like?
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B
Yeah, I wasn't particularly bookish. I mean, we did have plenty of books around the house and my mother would read things to me and my. My sister's just a year older than me, and my other two brothers came along a lot later. And so, for instance, when the Narnia stories came out in the 1950s, we were on first editions because we got them when they came out and my mother read them to my sister and me. And so we were in on the ground floor for the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. And once you've discovered C.S. lewis, then there's a way across into other things as well, not least when I was a teenager getting into Lewis's slightly more adult stuff, like Screwtape Letters, and then finally his more seriously more adult stuff. But.
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I wasn't hugely bookish at that stage, partly because I was very keen on two other things, namely sport and music. If there was ever a ball to kick or Throw or hit, then I'd be right there and I would be dashing outside the house to join in with whichever game was going on. Likewise, I sang in the local church choir and I loved music. And we had a primitive record player, as we called them in those days. And I would save up my money to buy records of, I don't know, choruses from the Messiah or whatever it was, things that I was singing in the church choir that I wanted to hear other people singing. And so sport and music were really.
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More important to me. But of course, singing in a church choir means you can't avoid the Psalms and the Gospels and the regular reading of the whole of Scripture, more or less in the lectionary. And so though I wasn't particularly well taught and it wasn't the sort of church which majored on Bible teaching, so called the steady drip feed, week by week of hearing at least mildly intelligent sermons.
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And singing the stuff and the hymns and so on, all of that was quite formative. And I look back now and realize, yeah, the sort of hymns we sang, the hymns by Charles Wesley or Isaac Watts or whatever, the great hymns in the modern Western tradition, those formed me and shaped me as much as any reading I was doing, which, if I can just drop in. One of the delights of my life at the moment is that I have a 9 year old grandson who has just been officially sworn in as a chorister in New College Chapel Choir, which is right across the street from where I'm sitting in Oxford. And it's one of the finest men and boys choirs, I think it's fair to say, one of the finest men and boys choirs in the world. And to watch him now at age 9, singing the Psalms, singing the hymns, singing them, the great settings of the Magnificat, oh, does my heart good. The thought that that's. Now he's imbibing that even though he' in an electronic culture, that stuff still is there and still matters. Anyway, sorry, that's.
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A
That's fantastic.
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What were some other early influences that shaped you in your childhood, in your teen years, before you got to Oxford the first time?
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B
Well.
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My mother's father, my maternal grandfather, was a parish priest who became an archdeacon. And I remember him vividly. He was a delightful man and great fun to be with and he'd been a great cricketer in the days of his youth and always had stories about this and that and the other. But there he was taking services week by week and preaching sermons and I would go and be with them and hear that and as kind of an easy influence. There was no hard sell. There was no now then, young man, what does this mean to you? It's just kind of assumed this is who we are as a family and you kind of join in and start saying your own prayers. And then when I was about 12, somebody from the Scripture Union actually came to my school. And I'm not sure why the school let them do this because it wasn't a specifically Christian school. But these people suggested that there was this thing called the Bible and some people liked reading it every day. And here were some notes that would help you. And I think I was probably 12 years old and it seemed to me a good idea at the time. And so I started reading the Bible every day. And I've never seen any good reason to stop. Of course, the pattern of reading has changed over the years. I now read in the original languages and so on. But the habit, the daily, you know, if the day starts, if, say, when I'm traveling around the world or whatever it is, if the day has started without some Bible reading, I have this sense that I haven't quite got the right clothes on, you know, something wrong. I'm familiar with that something's wrong with today. But then I had one or two very fine influences because I then started going to the boys camps that were run by the Scripture Union in Scotland through, I think the first one I went to, I was just 13, and I went every Easter holidays and every summer holidays through my teens, and I would not miss it. And of course, two thirds of that was that we were climbing mountains and doing rock climbing and canoeing and sailing, and we were camping outside and doing all the fun stuff. But there were morning and evening prayers, quite short, semi formal, but with short, good talks by the camp leaders. Basically a good old fashioned 1950s British evangelical message. And I just soaked it in. I took it all in and learned the verses and did the stuff. Only now, looking back a lot later, I think there were some ways in which that tradition needed a shakeup, et cetera, et cetera. But it's good stuff. It's based on, we're talking about Jesus, we're talking about the cross and resurrection, we're talking about God and you getting it together, sort of, what's not to like? So that was the backbone of my specifically Christian experience through my teens. And when I was at home in the school holidays, I was at a boarding school. When I was at home in the school holidays, I would go to church with my family, which both was and wasn't helpful. It would keep the wheels turning. But it wasn't a particularly high octane teaching place. But I was by then reading stuff that I could get my hands on and just wanting to know more and explore more and particularly studying the Bible became a hobby through my mid teens and there were two or three friends from the scripture union camps. We would write letters to each other. In the days when people still wrote.
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A
Letters, there was no texting, no email. So you wrote a letter.
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B
Today it would have been emails, but then it was, you know, I've been reading Romans, chapter whatever, and I'm just puzzled about what Paul says here. What do you think? And then, you know, a week later you might get a response in the slow postal system. But so that was just part of who I was. And as I say, it was like a hobby, but a very exciting one.
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A
When did you first sense a call, so to speak, to ministry? What was that like for you? How did it show up? Or it was like, oh, this is a family tradition and off to seminary I go.
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B
Yes. A, I didn't know anything about seminaries, but B, actually my father and his father and going back, I think my father was fifth generation father to son. They ran a family firm in the northeast of England, which was what you would call a lumber firm. They would import timber from various places and then joinery manufacture along with the building trade. And when I was very young, knowing that my father had taken this on from his father, who'd taken it on from his father, et cetera, I just assumed that's how the world worked and that one day I would take on the business myself. And by the time I was about seven or eight, I was quite worried about that because I could see what my father was doing and it didn't attract me at all.
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A
This episode is brought to you by compassion. Living this life as a surrendered believer in Jesus, I get routinely challenged by what it means to have compassion for others. You know what, in leadership, your heart kind of goes numb. Not to simply have knowledge, right? Not just feelings and opinions about the challenging things that you and I see and experience every day, but really to be moved by our faith in Christ to a spirit of generous and compassionate living. That for me is a discipline. And I wonder for you how it's going. Right. Do you feel a deep sense of compassion? Can you imagine what might change if you actually did? So to help with this, I've spent years building strong relationships with experts around the world and what it means to put your faith into action So I have found that when I partner with Compassion and I meet the kids that we're actually sponsoring, we have several kids that we sponsor in Guatemala. There's a part of my heart that opens that otherwise remains closed. It has moved me to a level of compassion that I wouldn't have experienced even after three decades in leadership. You want to learn more? You want to open your heart? Head on over to compassion.comcarrie that's compassion.comcarrie and open up your heart. This holiday season, this episode is brought to you by my 2026 church trends. Hey, as you head into 2026, what cultural shifts do you need to keep an eye on as a church leader? I mean, it's a really big question, right? You got your head down trying to do the work from day to day, but there's some big stuff happening, right? You and I both know how easy it is to get caught up into the week to week of ministry sermons, meetings, you know, Sunday after Sunday grind. And you just miss what's really going on in the culture. That's why every year I release my annual Church Trends Report, and it's to help you see what's next and to lead with clarity. So for 2026, I've identified seven disruptive trends that are shaping the future of the church. And we're seeing Gen Z's surprising surge in church attendance. They're kind of leading it, something very few people expected two years ago. There's a new boldness in evangelism I'm gonna be talking about, and maybe the most concerning of all. Most churches still aren't ready for the AI revolution that's already reshaping ministry and leadership. So those are just a few of the trends that we'll be unpacking this year. The trends are backed by data, and I share my thoughts on why it's important and what you can do about it. So this year, I'm doing something new. All the trends are premiering live inside the Art of Leadership Academy. You'll not only get the full 2026 Church Trends Report and the Leader Guide, but also a live interactive Q and A and podcast series. All of that is launching in January. So if you want to be the first to access it, head on over to 2026ChurchTrends.com for free access. Once you've signed up, you'll be in the loop for everything related to my 2026 church trends report. Again, it's all free, so just click the link in the description of this episode or visit 2026churchtrends.com the Future of the church is still bright, especially for leaders who see it clearly and who respond wisely. So at 7 or 8, you had this sense that I'm not gonna do this with my father.
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B
Well, that I wasn't sure how this was gonna work for me, particularly because around that same time I was aware that I would like to be like my other grandfather. In other words, that I would like to be taking services and preaching sermons and leading worship and so on. I didn't really have much sense of what else a parish priest does, an ordained minister does. Obviously most pastoral work is behind a screen. You don't see it from the ordinary popular point of view, but I had that sense. So when I still thought I was going to have to be running the family firm, I assumed that maybe I would be able to find some lay role, some non ordained role in the church where I would still be able to do something. And then one day when I was, I don't know, nine or 10, my father said to me one day, something quite casually about when you decide what you want to do with your life. And I remember vividly that moment to this day. I remember it thinking, oh, you mean I have a choice? Okay, I know exactly what I'm gonna do with my life. Again, being very ignorant about what ordained life actually looks like and consists of. And it was only then, so I lived on that through my teens, and it was only then when I was in Oxford and enormously enjoying the philosophy and then the theology, that I realized that though I was still called definitely to be a preacher and teacher, actually I was more being called into the academic world rather than an ordinary parish life. And I regret that, and I don't regret it. Both my brothers in law are retired parish clergy and I've seen close up what the life of a parish priest is like. And it's a wonderful thing. It's very hard work, very unsung hero kind of thing. But I really honour that calling and regret that I didn't have it. I had. My equivalent was to be running a cathedral for five years and then running a diocese for seven years with various other things, but really honoring the work of the local clergy particularly, and doing my best to support them. So it's been a peculiar path which nobody sensible would have mapped out in advance. I mean, why would you? And I've had to oscillate between the academic and the pastoral, which I think has probably been good in terms of my understanding of scripture, but it's been Quite costly, all the moves of house, et cetera, particularly for my dear wife, who is the real hero of the story from when we met onwards.
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A
Well, that itinerant life can be really difficult in ministry as well. Tomorrow, you know, where you're moving house to house every few years. It's funny, we thought that. I mean, we've been in the same place for 30 years, but when my wife and I got married, we talked about back then in 1990, you still registered for things and you got dishes and so on. And she says, well, we have to have white dishes because we're going to be moving every three to five years and they have to fit in wherever we are. So we still have a set of white dishes. And ironically, chronically, we've been in the same community for 30 years.
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B
You just never knew.
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A
Yeah, yeah. What are some of the costs of ministry that you see from the seat that you're in? Anne, I said to you when we got on, you're always meeting with pastors. You were last week with a group of pastors that I think Stephen Foster brought in, or you're meeting with new alpha leaders or cohorts from North America that have come over to visit with you. When you see what pastors day to day are bearing, what do you notice?
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B
I mean, I do see a lot of excitement at the moment because right now it seems to be the case that quite unexpectedly, on both sides of the Atlantic, quite a lot of young people, including quite a lot of young men, are coming into church without necessarily having a big sell, a hard push. It isn't that Billy Graham's been in town or whatever. I hear stories of people just walking down the street and seeing this big building and thinking, I wonder what goes on in there. And rolling in and finding there's some music and people are very nice and there's not. The coffee's not bad. And then, you know, within six months, they're leading a Bible study group and you think, how does that stuff I've.
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A
Never seen in my life. Have you seen that?
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B
Quite, quite so. I think there's great excitement at the moment. But of course, life in ministry is hard. It's tough, it's very demanding, not least because if you're doing it well, it grows. You know, if you are a good pastor, then word gradually gets well, quite quickly gets around, oh, I should go and talk to Jim or Fred or whoever it is, because he's really very helpful and he'd be very kind. And so Jim or Fred or whoever it is finds that his date book gets filled up with pastoral visits. And that is exhausting, especially since quite a lot of very good clergy are actually introverts rather than extroverts like me. Then for an introvert to have four or five pastoral visits in a day is really draining. And if at the same time they're in the back of their mind, they're thinking about the Sunday sermon, or they're thinking about some larger issue in the church, which they and their friends are wrestling with, it is tiring. It is exhausting. And wise clergy and their families factor in time away and proper holidays, et cetera. But it is difficult. Not least because, of course, certainly in the Church of England, clergy do not get very much stipend. The remuneration package is not very substantial.
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A
Okay, yes, that seems to be pretty universal.
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B
The house isn't up to much either.
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So it is tough. And the other thing is, if you're doing it half decently, if you're preaching wisely and well and powerfully, there will be counterattacks. There will be people in the congregation who grumble, There will be colleagues who undermine you. There will be sudden temptations where you'll be in danger of being pulled off in some quite dangerous and damaging directions. Not to mention the constant wrestle with, am I expounding this passage right? And supposing I'm getting that bit wrong, I'm actually leading people astray. So all of these things, it's not just, okay, I'm now ordained, so we just follow on down the line. There are tram lines which you do go down, but en route. Oh, my goodness. There's all kinds of stuff. And.
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In the book on Ephesians, I talk about, of course, spiritual warfare, apropos Ephesians, chapter 6. And clergy are signing on for that. And I've often said to people, you must have a good team of people who covenant to pray for you, because you're gonna need that protection. You need that sense of people who you may not see very often, but who you know are praying for you day by day because you need protection. And that's not being melodramatic. That's simply the reality.
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A
I'd like to put a pin in that and come back to spiritual warfare. But I'd like to go back to Oxford. So when you went to Oxford, where did you think that would lead? And then where did it end up leading in the end?
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B
Okay. It was a curious thing because.
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At school I had specialized in classics in Latin and Greek and ancient history, and I loved the ancient history particularly, but I had spent far too much time playing cricket and rugby and goodness knows what, and playing a lot of music, any instrument I could get hold of, any choir I could sing in. So I hadn't studied nearly as hard as many teenagers. So I only scraped into Oxford by the skin of my teeth. And I actually scraped in to read theology because there was less demand for theology than for philosophy and ancient history. And I probably wouldn't have got in to read philosophy and ancient history. But during my first two terms I got to know a student at Wycliffe who became a close friend and still is a close friend by the name of Oliver o', Donovan, who's now a very well known world class theologian, ethicist particularly, but he was just three years or so ahead of me. We met in a Hebrew class actually, and he, having seen who I was, advised me that I should ask my college if I could take the philosophy and ancient history course first and then come back and do theology as a second bachelor's degree. And to begin with that seemed like an extraordinary dream, but the more I thought and prayed about it, the more it seemed to make sense and that my tutors in my college were quite happy about that. So then I was really up against it because I had to plunge into the philosophy and ancient history course without having done the normal preliminary work for that. And so I spent a lot of time actually in the books and in the Greek and the Latin, et cetera, which was just as well because I then did get a good degree in 1971, which is then the foundation of everything I've done ever since. So I then went to Wycliffe hall where curiously, I'm now teaching part time in semi retirement. But I went there as seminary and did the theology degree from there. So that was a bit of a twist and turn already, maybe setting the pattern for the rest of my life. You know, start off doing one thing, change and do the other, go back and do the first one, now changes this way and that. But then, you know, life throws odd things at you. And I found myself then getting into the doctoral stream, which again was very hard work but enormously exciting, just at a time when new approaches to St. Paul particularly were coming up. So that right in the middle of my doctoral work, Ed Sanders produced his book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, and lots of questions which I'd already had about Paul in his Jewish world, et cetera, sprang into new life. I didn't agree with more than maybe two thirds of what Sanders said, but it was, oh wow, there's some exciting stuff going on here, and we're really rattling cages and let's get in there and find out what's happening and mix it with them. So that was how that happened. That's all in the mid-70s we're talking about now.
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A
So there are a lot of people, Tom, who have their doctorates, whether it's their PhD or a DMin or whatever that happens to be. A lot of people have gone on to. To levels of higher education, but few have contributed the way you have contributed. I mean, I know that's probably embarrassing to hear, but I think every listener would probably agree with that. And as I said to you when we were setting up this conversation, one of my concerns, because we have so many young leaders listening, and that's why I don't want to talk about the making of N.T. wright, is you don't produce, like even your latest book on the vision of Ephesians by doing a little bit of research for six months on Ephesians. This is the product of a lifetime of investment, a lifetime of learning, reading books you will never cite in any bibliography. Right? You just can't. Because. And so I want to go into some of those early habits, early discovery disciplines back when you were at Oxford, back in your 20s and 30s. Because right now you've got tens of thousands of leaders in their 20s and 30s listening who are saying, huh, if I want to become nt, right, like for my age, what does that require? And it's probably not watching more TikTok videos, I'm guessing.
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B
No, it probably isn't. I mean, of course, the base is the Greek of the New Testament and the Hebrew, if possible, of the Old Testament. I know Hebrew is harder than Greek.
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A
But I only have my Greek. I don't have my Hebrew.
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B
But I mean, I've often said reading the New Testament without knowing any Greek is like trying to play a Beethoven symphony on a mouth organ. You know, you may be able just to get about the tune, but this is not going to end well.
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And alas, alas, several of the modern translations.
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And I don't use that many modern translations, there's four or five that I regularly consult because I'm working from the Greek all the time myself. But several of the modern translations are trying to project particular theological nuances onto the text. And I get so frustrated when I see that happening. And I continually say to the students, you've got to have at least two, preferably three or four English translations on the desk. If you haven't got the Greek and the Hebrew to make sure you're getting different angles. Otherwise you may be fooled into thinking that the text actually means what this translation says it means. And this happens particularly with Paul and justification and the language of righteousness, law and all that. Romans and Galatians. That's where I've seen it particularly. But in order to get into that, then obviously the regular, regular day by day reading of the text is absolutely vital. You know, when I was at seminary, knowing that I was doing the theology degree and I wanted to do it as well as I could, I set myself quite a rigorous program of day by day reading. I can't remember how it worked, but it was something like a chapter of the Gospels every day, a chapter of Paul every day, two chapters of the Old Testament every day, on and on through all in the original languages, the Greek, the New Testament was in the original languages. My Hebrew was just getting going. So I did do some Hebrew study, particularly Isaiah, which I've always loved. But I would be reading the English of the Old Testament and then when things got puzzling, trying to check back with the Hebrew and see how I could do my Hebrew gradually caught up. I mean, not as well as the Greek, but still a bit. By the way, I was very fortunate. I had Latin from the age of 8 and Greek from the age of 13. And my only regret there is I didn't start Greek earlier because I was in the class which had started at 11, and I had big scramble to catch up with them, which I'd just about done by the time I was a student. But so.
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The regular reading of Scripture and the mapping of it out, the taking of a book and saying, now what is Colossians all about? What's the main theme here? What's the book of the prophet Micah all about? How does it divide up? Making my own plans and patterns of what was going on. And then that forces you to bump your nose up against the difficulties, the places which don't seem to make sense. And then once you've felt the difficulty of yourself, you want to scurry away to the commentaries, all these funny things on the walls behind me here to see what so and so makes of it. And how does the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible.
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Read that bit, et cetera, et cetera. And so for me, it's always been, you know, there've been times when there's a new book come out which I've thought, oh, I suppose I better read that. So I will sit down and kind of pace myself through it and take some notes and move on. But often the books that I've read have been books that I've urgently wanted to read, because I have been aware of that problem too, and I'd love to know what this person says about it. So in a sense, once you dive in and get going.
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The sense of the urgency of the questions and problems drives you into particular reading as well as, you know, if somebody half decent has just produced a new commentary on a book that you hadn't thought of studying, you may want to say, okay, I'm going to take two or three days and study that, because that may well be something I should get to know. But for me, often it's been driven by, I wouldn't say the needs of the moment, but the excitement of a particular topic. Ah, here's a couple of books on that, right?
- [35:14]
I had a sabbatical in Princeton in 2009 when I was trying to finish my big book on Paul. And during the day I'd be reading and writing and writing and reading. And then in the evenings I would go back to the little apartment that my wife and I were in and I couldn't help myself. I would take three or four books back with me in case I could read a bit after supper. And I realized, actually, once you've had supper after a long day at the desk, you probably aren't in a fit state to read these books. And anyway, you can't actually read one with your left eye and one with your right eye. The brain just doesn't work like that. But that was the desire. I want to get on top of this stuff. I want to master it and then to be filled with it. So that's how it's gone for me.
- [36:00]
A
Today's episode is brought to you by the Art of Leadership Academy. Hey, if this podcast is part of your leadership rhythm, I've got something I think you're gonna love. Inside the Art of Leadership Academy. You'll get exclusive access to show notes for every single episode, plus a private space to discuss each one with other church leaders. And with me, you're not gonna find a whole lot of, like, negative jumping in or like, hey, I can't believe you said that. Right? It's not like social media. It's social media, but better. Okay. It's like your own behind the scenes breakdown of every episode with real time conversations on how to put into practice what you're learning. And here's what makes it even better. It's completely free to join. You'll also get first access to the upcoming seven disruptive church trends that will rule 2026 team leader guide I do that every year. You'll be the first to see it, along with interactive live streams and a podcast series that goes with it. So getting started takes less than 60 seconds. And when you're in, you'll instantly be part of a life giving community. No noise, no spam, just a group of church leaders helping you grow faster and lead more effectively. So click the link in the description of this episode or go to theartofleadershipacademy.com just a few clicks and you'll be in. Look forward to seeing you inside. So you've had a natural curiosity. You've got a passion for it, which is great. This isn't work for you.
- [37:26]
B
This is a joy.
- [37:27]
A
I mean it has work like elements.
- [37:30]
B
It has some serious work like elements. I mean, there are times when.
- [37:35]
Particularly if somebody writes an article controverting something that I've said, then I try thoughtfully, prayerfully, humbly to say, gee, maybe they're right and maybe I'm wrong, but we're gonna have to do a lot more digging to get underneath this one and see where it is. And sometimes that really does feel like hard work. And when you're scribbling in the margins of books, how can you possibly say that?
- [38:00]
So there are times.
- [38:03]
When it's been hard work.
- [38:07]
But mostly, yes, it's been driven by delight. And once I started writing, I mean that's the other thing of course, that for whatever reason, from quite an early age I have been able to write. And I didn't realize that until I think, till I was already doing graduate work, when I realized that other people were struggling to put sentences on the page and I seemed to be able to do it much more easily. And it's funny, quite a bit later, when one of my children was having a hard time at school in her early teens, I think, and she came to me in tears with the school report that said this and that and the other, and it was all so seemed negative and I said, okay, listen. And I got out of a drawer my old school reports and I made her read some of them, which.
- [39:01]
A
And what did they say?
- [39:02]
B
Well, one of them jumped out at me because it was on my English work when I was maybe 14 or something like that, and it said, this boy's English is undoubtedly the best in the class. However, he continually spoils that by bringing the wrong books to school, by failing to turn in work on time, by failing to read the question before he starts to Write. But the teacher was saying, actually, you can write. Will you please get the rest of your act together? Because this might be quite fun.
- [39:35]
But I took no notice. I wasn't interested in being a writer, per se. It's only when I had something to say that then. I mean, comparing notes with colleagues. Now, I remember once we got into this discussion when I was chaplain of Worcester College and you meet with my.
- [39:53]
Colleagues in other disciplines, and somebody said, oh, Tom, you've written a couple of books. How many words do you write a day? And I said, well, when I'm going, well, I write about 1000 words an hour. So I said, if I have a good day, I might manage six or seven thousand words and sometimes even more. And one colleague with a completely straight face said, tom, I don't believe you. And I didn't know what to say because I wasn't making it up and I knew I wasn't making it up. And with the advent of the computers, you can check exactly where you are. And of course, if you write 10,000 words in a day, you're gonna want to sit down in a week or so and read them through and adjust them, but at least you can get the basic stuff down. And so I've been very. For. But comparing notes with other colleagues and friends, including some very good writers among them.
- [40:47]
They will tell me that they're jealous of the fact that words seem to come easily to me, but then I think they always did.
- [40:56]
When my mother was in her mid-90s and in a nursing home and I gave her a copy of yet another new little book which I'd published, she shook her head and said, I always did say you'd had too much to say for yourself. Maybe there was some point to it.
- [41:14]
Gee, thanks, Mum. So, you know, downsides and upsides.
- [41:19]
A
Exactly. But six or seven thousand words is extraordinary. And, I mean, if you look at your writing. But there's something about that compounding of all the reading of Greek at 13 of Hebrew along the way of the daily disciplines of reading the different scholarly literature like. Like it's. Most people would say 500 to 1,000 words a day, if you're writing a book is like, good day's work. Do 6 to 7,000.
- [41:47]
B
I'd be very depressed if I.
- [41:48]
A
You would be very depressed, But I mean, your work is dense. And I'm thinking, like, when you describe being on your Princeton sabbatical and being with your wife in that tiny apartment and reading and writing all day and then coming home hoping that you could do a Little more reading.
- [42:08]
Yeah, but that is, that is what I think a lot of young leaders don't understand is that, you know, you're not maybe you, you know, you love sports. One of the things I've given up so that I can do, I mean, I'm tracking with the Blue Jays right now who are doing abysmally. But anyway, you know, once in a while, jump on a bandwagon for a couple of weeks if there's a team that I care about that seems to be making a run at it. But as a general rule, I gave up golf years ago because I really want to do this work. I don't watch sports because I'm only moderately interested unless there's a playoff. But there've gotta be trade offs and sacrifices along the way. What have those look like in your life so that you can quote, get the reps in.
- [42:49]
B
Yeah, I mean there are things, I mean now that we live half the year back in Oxford, it is very frustrating because Oxford is full of music. I walk down the street from where we live and I pass the Hollywell Music Room where people like Handel and Haydn came and played 300 years ago. And there are posters outside for a string quartet concert or a song recital or this or that almost every day. And I think, oh, I'd love to hear that. And then I think, no, haven't got time to do that this week.
- [43:21]
A
That is the trade off. Right. 24 hours in a day.
- [43:23]
B
And from time to time Maggie and I will go to a symphony concert. I mean we are within a five minute walk of the Sheldonian Theatre which they have wonderful symphony concerts and similar and the great choral works and so on. And so we do go to some things, but there's much more we could do. And actually my physical disabilities now mean that some other things which used to occupy me sadly can't anymore. I mean I did used to play as much golf as I could, which was maybe on average once every two weeks. I mean that's not a good rate of golf.
- [44:00]
A
That's impressive.
- [44:01]
B
But I used to play quite a bit in Scotland when we were were Andrews, but I had a knee operation a couple of years ago and in fact both knees are still quite painful and so I can play maybe six holes. Playing nine is hard work. I don't think I'd be up for 18 at the moment. The other thing is I used to love, love climbing mountains in Scotland or the Lake District, especially Scotland. And we can see a range of, of mountains in Harris where we have our other house and I can't get up them, or if I did struggle up them, I certainly wouldn't be able to come down because walking downhill is harder on the knees than walking.
- [44:43]
A
It's harder, isn't it?
- [44:45]
B
So I just say, well, there it is, I'm not doing that anymore. I'll walk down on the beach with the grandchildren and paddle in the shallows while they're having a surfing lesson or whatever. That's fine, that's fine. But. So there have been trade offs like that and. Yeah.
- [45:03]
But I mean, at my age, mid-70s, there is a diminishment of what one can do anyway, I think the other thing is I love reading poetry and I don't read as much poetry as I'd like to and I'd like to go back and reread some favorites and I don't make enough time for that. And I have read some of the great novels, but there are lots more which I hear about and know about. But I've never read right through Dostoevsky. I mean, I've never read Tolstoy at all to my shame. You know, I would say that to Rowan Williams and a shadow would cross his face as though, how can you be a human being if you haven't read these great things? And we don't go to nearly enough Shakespeare. Whenever we do go to live theater, we absolutely love it and we talk about it for a week or so after what was going on in this scene and that. But we don't do that enough. So there are things which I'd like to do more of. But you know, life is a bit of a trade off and that's fair enough.
- [46:06]
A
No, I appreciate that and I think every leader is struggling with that in a significant way. So C.S. lewis was an early influence and that's, you know, I hadn't connected the timelines until you said that C.S. lewis, that was an early influence for you. And the Chronicles of Narnia came out, you got first edition.
- [46:26]
B
Narnia was important. And then having, I mean, I've often found with writers, once you trust a writer, you can move on to other things that they've done. And so I remember particularly Screwtape letters when I was at school reading that and then reading Miracles and reading Surprised by Joy and so on. And of course, being in Oxford as an undergraduate, you're very much aware this is where he was for most of his life and where Maggie and I now live in Hollywell Street. We are about a five iron shot from the wall of Magdalen College where he spent his young adult life. And when he went to meet his friends in the pub on Tuesday lunchtime or whatever it was, the natural way he would have come would be to walk right past what is now our front door.
- [47:13]
A
Did you ever cross paths with. With him? He died in 1963.
- [47:17]
B
Lewis died the same day that Jack Kennedy died, November 1963. When I was only 15, I suppose 14 or 14.
- [47:29]
I nearly met Tolkien because Tolkien was a Fellow of Merton College here in Oxford and in retirement would be having lunch in Merton most days of the week. And he died just before I became a Fellow of Merton in 1975. So if he hadn't gone and done that, I would have been sitting next to him at lunch, but didn't happen.
- [47:50]
A
Who are some other, as you say, there are certain authors that just become, I'm going to read everything they've ever written. Have you got a handful of scholarly or otherwise authors that you're like, these are people that you can go deep with, you would recommend.
- [48:08]
B
I mean, it's curious because some of them that I will name are people with whom I profoundly disagree, but who are really worthwhile reading because even when I think they're wrong. And the obvious one is Albert Schweitzer, whose quest for the historical Jesus and then his book on Paul, absolute eye openers, even though I would now be severely critical of them, partly just because he writes so well and it's so vivid and exciting and he understood the scholarship and you can see the issues ranging themselves this way and that, by contrast with somebody like Rudolf Bultmann, the great German, whose writing style was turgid in the extreme and, you know, you could chew your way through it, but it wouldn't be much fun. Among my own contemporaries, my beloved late lamented friend Richard Hayes, who just died last year. Was it last year? Was it early this year? Not that long ago?
- [49:02]
A
He was a great writer.
- [49:03]
B
Oh, my goodness, very, very fine writer. And Richard was a dear friend and I've been back and reread his books and he wrote some stunning things and very, very grateful for that.
- [49:21]
I mean, I've followed my nose through various other bypass. And.
- [49:29]
One of the Germans who I really respect, of course, is Martin Hengel. I've read most of what Martin Hengel wrote, and again, even when I disagree, Hengel was so learned and managed to put it together that he always learn from him. But in terms of poetry, and I suspect not a lot of your viewers or listeners will know this, there's a celebrated Irish poet at the moment called Michal o' Sheill, O apostrophe, S I A D, H A I, L, pronounced Shiel, him or her. And Michael. It's Michael, basically, though he pronounces it, I think, Michal is it the Gaelic pronunciation.
- [50:09]
He's just an extraordinary poet, and he published five or six years ago an amazing long poem, quite a fat little book called the Five Quintets, which is like T.S. eliot's Four Quartets, except it's five sets of poems in a genre which he's really invented himself, telling the whole story of modern Western culture, whether it's aesthetic or theological or philosophical or economic or political, and going through the key players, whether it's John Donne or whether it's, I don't know, Albert Schweitzer again or whoever, and some of the contemporary political leaders doing little pen portraits of them all in this extraordinary quizzical, poetical style. And the whole thing thing is like going through a picture gallery of how modern Western culture works, except that it's so beautifully laid out. Michal, his first wife died a few years ago, and he's married again and actually lives in New York because his second wife is a surgeon at one of the hospitals in New York. And last time I saw him, I think Maggie and I had dinner with them in New York. But he's a wonderful human being. He's. There's kind of a rich intelligence to him, which we'll link to all of.
- [51:34]
A
This in the show notes. So if people are trying to take notes or figure out spelling, we'll link to that in the show notes.
- [51:40]
B
Yeah, good, good.
- [51:41]
A
No, those are interesting because I wouldn't have necessarily predicted those. So great, great influences. Anything else about. You know, I really believe as we get older, and having just had a milestone birthday earlier this year myself, you think you really.
- [51:57]
The sum of your habits. Right. Either you read or you didn't read. Either you wrote or you didn't write. So when you're thinking about the compound habits that you have practiced over a lifetime that have produced who you are today and so many.
- [52:14]
A legacy that so many of us value and appreciate and are grateful for, what are some of those other compound hair habits that you have practiced over the decades?
- [52:25]
B
I mean, perforce, because we have four children and now six grandchildren, quite a bit of my life over the last several years has been family oriented. Wonderful. And our family, one of our children, lives quite close to us here in Oxford with his three children. The other three children, each of whom has one, are scattered slightly more Widely. But we try to see as much of them as we can, and either they come and see us or we go and see them. And then we go up to Scotland, as we did this summer, to the new house that we've got up there, and they came in waves and spent time with us a week or a month or however long it was, and just hanging out with family and doing fun things, going for little walks and listening to music and watching quirky stuff on Netflix, whatever it might be.
- [53:21]
These things have been very rich and we are blessed with some interesting, quirky children and grandchildren who never cease to surprise us in some ways. And that's delightful. So that's been. Family has been really important.
- [53:39]
Mine goes blank when you say that, because I think, how do I work?
- [53:43]
A
How did family work when you were, when your kids were young, young and you weren't a grandparent? How did that go? Because you're studying, studying, studying. You had. You were a bishop. You, I mean, you had academics.
- [53:55]
B
By the time I was a bishop, the family was a little bit older. I guess they were late teen. Hang on, late teens, early 20s. By the time I became a bishop. 2003. Yes. The youngest was, I think, 23 or something when I became a bishop. But still before that when I was a college chaplain, which is a hugely demanding and busy job during term. But then when I was dean of a cathedral, that was always quite contested because there were all sorts of pressures, et cetera. We did try to factor in quality time with the children and say we, Maggie, my wife and myself would do that. But I remember we had about a year or two when. And I'd read this tip, somebody had said in some magazine or other.
- [54:44]
That to say to your children this coming Saturday, you can each have a whole hour of my time. And whatever you want to do with that hour, we will go and do that. And an hour may not seem very long, but when it's entirely theirs and they would plan for it, can we go for a walk around such and such or could we go to see movie down the road or something so that. That we tried to do some things like that where they knew that though I was hugely busy, there was some time which I really wanted to spend with them. And I still look back on some fun things that we did in those times, but it's very much grabbing time and opportunities here and there. And we used to make music together as a family a bit.
- [55:35]
Singing together and, and playing duets, whatever. Obviously, we haven't done that much recently, but the kids particularly the two boys, very accomplished musicians. And.
- [55:49]
So we've tried to do that as much as we could. Again, one could do more.
- [55:57]
So. Yeah. In terms of habits.
- [56:01]
Hard to say. Hard to say. I mean, when I think of the things that some people would say that I haven't said. I am not a great art gallery goer. I always feel slightly guilty about that. If I'm in a great city where there's some famous art gallery, I think I really ought to go and spend an afternoon there. And I can usually find a good reason for not doing that. I'll just go for a walk around the park or sit on a bench and read a novel or something. I have been to a few art galleries, of course, as one does, but it's not my number one thing. So friendships and family. I mean, I've been blessed with some wonderful friends.
- [56:41]
A
What have you learned about friendship, Tom?
- [56:44]
B
Well, well, well, well, as an extrovert, it just sort of happens. Sometimes you feel you have to work at it a bit and sometimes you realize you've drifted away from somebody and you need to make the effort to say, can we meet for dinner in three weeks time? And da, da, da, da, and put it in the diary. And my wife and I having come back to. We've been trying to do that, though the pandemic was a real downer because we came back to Oxford just before the pandemic, assuming we'd pick up with lots of old friends who were in Oxford. And of course for a year nobody could see anybody and we all kind of got out of the habit of it. So that's been a bit odd. And comparing notes, I know a lot of people have found the same thing.
- [57:28]
A
I said I'd put a pin in it and I want to come back to it. You know, in your new book, the Vision of Ephesians.
- [57:34]
You obviously deal with the spiritual warfare passages that Paul has. So I would love. You know, you mentioned when you were talking about people who pursued ordained clergy and, you know, they served their life in the church, that they were going to have spiritual warfare. And I grew up always believing in the truth of the Bible. Read that passage in Ephesians and kind of thought, oh, that's nice, maybe that's something they experienced or something people could potentially. Then I got into ministry and I'm like, oh, this is what this is about. Okay, how have you seen or how do you see spiritual warfare playing out, particularly in the lives of pastors?
- [58:12]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:15]
It'S always murky because evil is always murky. It's very seldom clearly defined. It very seldom comes and knocks on your front door and says, I am evil. Will you come with me and do what I tell you? It's much more subtle than that. And it's on the edge of something. You know, C.S. lewis is awfully good on this where he says that old so and so comes up to you after lunch one day and says, now a lot of us were thinking it would be really good if you could help us with this project. And you know, you think, oh well that's nice, they want me to help. And then you just something on the edge of it makes you think, oh dear, what am I getting into here? Whatever it may be. And Lewis was very good at seeing the early stages of how one can get drawn into things which are basically.
- [59:07]
Dehumanizing.
- [59:11]
But again, the line between ordinary human folly and spiritual warfare full on wrestling with principalities and powers. There is no hard and fast line as far as I can see. It's interesting that in the New Testament each time Paul lifts principalities and powers, you know, thrones, dominions, authorities, rulers, et cetera, et cetera. In Greek, archaikai, exousiae and so on, the lists never come out the same, which implies to me that these are not precise, dictionary defined things where this is an arche and this is an exousia and this is a something and this is something. It's just that he is aware of a shadowy world just behind the veil, as it were, where there are, whether he called them daimonii or whatever, shadowy little figures who are not divine themselves, but they're trying to lure you into the paths of folly and of unfruitfulness for the gospel. And I mean part of it might just be to waste your time to spend half a day doing something which deep down you know, this really isn't advancing your wisdom, your love for God.
- [60:30]
A
So wasting time could be a ploy of the enemy.
- [60:32]
B
Wasting time, yeah, and that's maybe I get obsessive about that from an early age. I had somebody rub my nose in Colossians 4 where Paul says redeeming the time because the days are evil. And so no doubt I have wasted whole quantities of time many, many times. But I think that sense that if there is a period of half an hour, an hour, two hours, whatever, to have something worthwhile to do, and if the mind has been overtaxed and going too fast, then it might just be doing a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku puzzle or something which will just exercise the mind in a different way and be refreshing. It's like mentally going for a walk. Fine. Okay. Or going for an actual walk would be the same answer in a way.
- [61:27]
But it's obviously not just wasting time. It's wasting time in such a way as to feed wrong habits of heart and mind and soul and strength.
- [61:39]
Doing things which take you away from a sense of the presence of the love of God. And. And sometimes you only discover that by making the wrong choices. And then a little way down the track, realizing that this just has not been helpful. Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. And I think it's learning to recognize the helpful and unhelpful. But in a sense, that's the foothills and the larger mountains are when there really suddenly is a major battle. You know, I remember. I remember one guy who trained in Montreal for ministry when I was teaching in Montreal, who had a wonderful early ministry. And then he was sent by the bishop to go and run a parish at a particular point in the city where there was basically quite a lot of vice with a capital V. And he started church activities in the middle of a world where basically the principalities and powers had been running the show for quite a long time. And he came down with the most extraordinary sickness and had to be prayed over and healed. I'm not saying he was demon possessed or anything, but bad things happened to him and his family because he was taking the fight to the enemy. And we're not all called to do that in such an explicit way, but if we are, don't expect that the principalities and powers will take it lightly. I mean, in my book on Paul's Biological Paul A Biography, I talk about what happened to Paul in Ephesus when he says, it was so bad that I despaired of life itself. And I think the answer is Paul's early time in Ephesus had been a huge success and magicians had come and burnt their books and so on. And then the dark powers, when they strike back, they don't fight fair. They do all kinds of sneaky things. And Paul found himself in a really, really dark and bad place. And when that's going on, I think that's what's reflected in Ephesians. And we're not wrestling, and it's such an important point, we are not wrestling against flesh and blood. Today there are many people in Christian circles and outside who have political battles they want to fight and so easily label their opponents in whichever social or cultural issue they're dealing with, as though they are demonic, and then they want to fight their them, and sometimes quite literally to fight them. Whereas Paul insists, no, the real battle is elsewhere. The human beings that you may have to deal with, who may be muddled and misguided, as in a sense we all are, they are not the real problem. And if you think they are, you're merely colluding with the demonic powers themselves. And that's a lesson. I mean, Jesus said, don't be afraid of those who kill the body and then have nothing else they can do. Be afraid of the one who has other designs on your whole self here and hereafter. Which was a way of saying, look, guys, the Romans are a problem, but they're not the real problem. You know, the tax collectors are a problem, but they're not the real problem. We've got to defeat the enemy, the unseen but very powerful enemy who is the puppet master for these little puppets. Don't sweat the puppets. Make sure you're focused on the whole armor of God. You see, one of the things, you'll have seen it in the book at that point. This was one of the places where, when I was doing the lectures that led into that book.
- [65:15]
For the first time, I think I don't remember doing it before. I looked up the Old Testament background for the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness, et cetera. They're mostly from the back end of Isaiah and there's some from elsewhere as well. And they're all a bit about God's own armor. God says, I am going to come and wear these things and deal with the evil that's out there in the world. And Paul is saying, once you are seated in the heavenly places in Christ, you are joining God himself in dealing with the problems that still have to be dealt with. Allah, 1 Corinthians 15. He must reign until he's put all his enemies under his feet. And that was a whole revelation to, to me, these are not just handy tips as a preacher's hint about the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, et cetera. These are ways of saying God has won the victory in Christ in his death, resurrection and ascension. But that victory has to be implemented until the last enemy is destroyed, which is death. We are in between those two. And you are joining in with being required to hold the line. These are all defensive weapons except for the sword of the Spirit. And we are required to hold that line against the powers that are trying to strike back against the victory that was won on the Cross.
- [66:45]
I'll say one more thing, and I'm sorry this is a ramble, but, no.
- [66:48]
A
This is really good.
- [66:51]
B
I discovered early on, I mean, when I was, I think, still in my late 20s. 20s, that whenever I was preaching or teaching and got anywhere near the real meaning of the cross, that almost literature, literally all the furniture in the room would start jumping around. I mean, it got to be funny that I would just move into the paragraph that was dealing with what's really going on on the cross, and suddenly a lawn mower would start up in a garden outside so that nobody could hear what I was saying, and we'd have to shut a window and break the concentration. And I've had that so often that I've. Sometimes when it's happened, I've said to students, you need to know this is the sort of thing that happens. And when that happens, you can take courage because it probably means you've got your finger on something important and it's worth somebody striking back. But it's happened far too often for me for it to be mere coincidence or imagine coincidence.
- [67:52]
A
So it's like distraction in one form or another.
- [67:56]
B
Exactly. Something to put you off. Something to put you off. And I can recall specific instances of such. Or when a student suddenly faints in the front row or something like that, breaks out in a coughing fit once. And I thought, was it something I said? The answer is, yeah, probably.
- [68:17]
A
Tom, you said something really important. I remember preaching through Ephesians. This is almost 20 years ago. And it's funny because you reminded me of something where having. You know, I don't exegete texts the way you exegete texts, but I remember having everybody in the church stand up and looking at each other. And it was particularly powerful with spouses. And I said, look the person in the eye and just say to them, you are not my enemy. You are not my enemy. We had the whole church do that, and then everybody sat down and I said, the enemy is a principality and powers. And often we demonize our opponents. We demonize our spouse, our ex, our person across the aisle, politically. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? Because we are in a cultural moment right now where we are demonizing everybody we disagree with.
- [69:08]
B
Yep, yep, yep. I look across the pond from my British perspective and grieve over what's happening in America. And, I mean, Maggie and I have got friends in various places in America, and she's got some relatives as well. Various places in America. And sometimes when we have conversations with them, Maggie And I simply don't know where to put ourselves because what they are saying seems so counterintuitive. And then we say, is that because we read the London Times, is this because we listen to the BBC? Are they biased? Is it us that's wrong? Or are these people. And what's happened in America over the last couple of decades has been really, really worrying. And I hear, I recently read James Davison Hunter's new book, Democracy and Solidarity, which is so important, where he says that looking back over the last 30 years, the American institutional cultural life has been hollowed out, leaving simply exactly as Nietzsche said it would, a power struggle, that it's simply this brute force versus that brute force. And again and again I want to say the issues are not like that. Actually. We tend to push this way and that. And then anyone who takes up a position over there, it's assumed that they will also take up all the other 19 things that normally go with that position.
- [70:41]
A
Right. I said this one thing, therefore I stand for all of these things.
- [70:44]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [70:47]
And you know, I was pleased with the Pope the other day. Fancy me being pleased with the Pope. How patronizing can I get? But you know what I mean when he said apropos the pro life agenda on the abortion issue, that okay, to be pro life, but if you're pro life, you have to be against the death penalty as well. He knew perfectly well what he was saying. There are plenty of people who are passionately opposed to abortion, but also thoroughly and favor of the death penalty. And he's saying just let's be serious here. And I would say the same, looking as a Brit at American society about gun control, that, you know, you're very concerned about the life of the unborn child in the womb, but as soon as that child goes to kindergarten, you're quite happy that some drunken 18 year old should go down the street, buy an AK47 and come and spray the school with bullets, you know, and you say, oh well, you know, we have to have a bit of that because that's the price of the Second Amendment. And the, the Second Amendment is so important, et cetera. Now for most other people in the rest of the world, this is just total nonsense. But trying to get some American friends to see this is very difficult. And they would immediately, I know because I've had this, they would explain to me why the Second Amendment is what it is and why it still matters and so on. Okay, fine, that's where you are. But please hear that there might be other ways of doing this so that our trouble is in Britain we aren't getting anything right particularly. We're just muddled as usual. You know, what tends to happen is agendas get made in Germany or France or somewhere transferred across via the Enlightenment links to North America, where they get magnified this way and that. And we in Britain look this way and that and think what's all the fuss about?
- [72:43]
Doesn't mean we are hugely virtuous. It just means that we don't tend to, to polarize in that we have our polarities, but we don't tend to polarize in that way.
- [72:52]
A
You don't polarize, you don't demonize in the same way we get a little more of America here in Canada, where I'm resonance. But I'm curious if someone felt convicted about demonizing the other side. And I think when you lose the image of Christ in somebody, whether that can be someone who's unhoused, homeless, whether that's a drug addict, whether that's, whether that is somebody who votes the opposite way that you do, or the preacher down the street who you don't like, we tend to demonize. If somebody is realizing, okay, I'm demonizing, what is a path out of that mischaracterization of another human.
- [73:38]
B
It's tough. I mean, for me as a good Anglican, so many issues of spiritual health, et cetera, come back to the Eucharist, that whatever's going on in life, the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine, Paul says as often as you break the bread and drink the wine, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And that doesn't mean it's a good opportunity for a sermon on the cross, though that might be so as well. It means, means that when you're doing this, you are saying to the principalities and powers, Jesus is Lord and you aren't. Now, how do we go out from here? When I've been in pastoral ministry particularly, I found I had to do that again and again where huge issues would come up and I would bring them into the college chapel with me and I would break the bread and we'd share the wine.
- [74:36]
And then we'd go out and deal with whatever it was. And somehow, I mean, this is a very typical sacramental Anglican thing to say, but somehow that reality, that physical reality as a way of saying we believe in new creation, we believe in not just a non material spiritual world, but in God's new creation having already begun in Jesus and mysterious continuing through us. And so to bring the problems into the Eucharist and then see what happens. Now, when it's somebody that you're having a difficulty with in the congregation or a fellow clergy, whatever, which often sadly happens, then ideally you would find a wise person with whom to share that so that it isn't a power thing between the two of you, have at least a triangle of conversation, but at a certain point to hope and pray that you'll be able to get to the place where you could share the Eucharist together and actually look each other in the eye and give each other the peace of Christ. And that's tough and very demanding. And sometimes it's too much. And then it takes wise pastoral skill to know when to say, this has to be done, when to say, say, let's work towards this in three months time or whatever. And meanwhile we will pray for wisdom and pray for one another.
- [76:13]
But sensitivity to the internal dynamics and to the larger spiritual context of the church and the people, I think is absolutely vital.
- [76:23]
A
We've covered an awful lot, and I want to honor your time. Is there anything that we touched on that you want to say more about? Anything we totally left out? I mean, we're going to direct people to your new book, the Vision of Ephesians, which is fantastic and beautifully brief, too. Comprehensive and deep, but brief.
- [76:43]
B
Well, I mean, that's simply a function of the format. And I didn't expect this, but I came back to Oxford six years ago just before the pandemic, and my duties here focus particularly on once a year doing a series of Bible expositions for Wicter Fall. But these Bible expositions, they've got to be half an hour because that fits into the pattern of the weekly worship that they have where that takes place. And so the first two years I didn't write them out. I spoke from notes, and then I was a bit fed up with that. So the third year, when I did Romans 8, I thought, I'm going to write this out because I want to be as clear as I can. And then I took it on the road and did an expanding version to a group in Texas. And that really went like a rocket. And it was very exciting. And so the publishers said, well, that looks like a little book. And so then I did it again the next year with Acts. I did it this last year with Ephesians. I've done it the present year with Isaiah 40:55, which, God willing, will be a little book coming out this time next year. And this is like a sort of a retired man's new genre where for some reason, I'm writing 150 page books, but they seem to work.
- [77:58]
A
They do work. They do work. Yeah.
- [78:02]
B
So it's been fun.
- [78:03]
A
I've got one more question for you.
- [78:06]
What keeps you curious? The thing I love about you, yes, you're spending more time with family, you've mentioned semi retirement. But you are hardly somebody who's resting on his laurels. You're hardly someone whose main learnings are from a decade ago, 20 years ago. So in your mid-70s, what is keeping you curious, interested, engaged, leaning forward?
- [78:28]
B
I get kind of embarrassed about this because I really do think, and I'm saying this in the next new book, which is coming out in the spring, called God's Homecoming. That's a longer book, a sequel to Surprise by Hope. I begin that book by saying something which makes me realize, realize people are gonna roll their eyes and shake their heads and think, Tom Wright's really lost it this time. The beginning of the book says most Western Christians think that the aim of Christianity is for my soul to go to heaven when I die. That's what most believers believe. It's what most unbelievers unbelieve. But they're all wrong. The whole point is not for my soul to go to heaven, but for God's kingdom to come on earth, which is, after all, what Jesus told us to pray. Now, that sounds so simple, but of course it's utterly revolutionary. And many, many, many preachers, good, wise, careful, prayerful preachers down the years have focused the whole thing on how my soul gets to heaven and do I have to go to purgatory en route and all that stuff. And really that's not the point. But if you say it the New Testament way, then the Gospels make sense, that they don't make any other way. And you get a whole different impetus towards ecclesiology, towards the work of the church in the public square, towards issues of life and death and what happens after death. And so I follow that through. But really. So now when I'm invited to speak to different Christian groups, often I think what they want me to do is to take the framework they're already very happy with and to adjust a few nuts and bolts around the edge as sort of decoration and actually don't want to do that. I want to say, guys, we've all been getting it wrong and I'm sorry, that may sound horribly arrogant, but let's do what according to Acts, the Christians in Berea did, or the Jews in Berea did, which is to search the Scriptures and see whether these things are so. So that's the invitation of the new book. But I just think once that book's come out, then I better escape off to the far north of Scotland and stay out of the.
- [80:38]
Line of fire and offline.
- [80:40]
A
Well, you've hinted at that in your work over the years, that that has been a consistent life message.
- [80:45]
B
It's more and more explicit the more I get on.
- [80:48]
A
Well, there you go. There you go. Well, I gotta say, Tom, this has been an absolute delight. Thank you for being so transparent about your life, about taking us way back and thinking about the young N.T. wright. And I mean, my goodness, you've written more books than many of us have read. The latest is called the Vision of Ephesians. You have ones coming out every year. So we'll link to everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on with us today.
- [81:19]
B
Very good to be with you and God bless you. To all the people watching, listening, thank you, man.
- [81:25]
A
I am so glad we had that conversation and I'm just fascinated about what makes people who they are and T. Wright chief among them. I hope you enjoyed that again. You can get the show notes at my Art of Leadership Academy. Sign up for free. Join 14,000 leaders who have done that over at theartofleadershipacademy.com there's no credit card, no cost. Just jump in and join the conversation. Join the community. So next episode we've got JR Briggs. I was really intrigued by that. I'd never heard of JR but he wrote a book about how to ask great questions which I'm kind of interested in interested in as a podcaster. But beyond that, I think it just makes you a better human being. And well, we go there, we talk about how to hijack the brain of your audience, why the best leaders are the best question askers and a whole lot more. If you want to up your question game, subscribe, follow. You will never miss an episode that way. Also coming up, Sharon Hottie Miller, David Kinman, John Mark Comer, Craig Groeschel, and a whole lot more. Thanks for listening. If this conversation was helpful, leave a review review, maybe send it to your team and you can follow us online too. We are also we have a YouTube Spotify channel so check us out there. Thanks for listening and I hope our time together today helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing.
- [82:46]
Hey leaders, before we go today, if you want to expand your thinking, grow your leadership and get some really relevant, fascinating, curious content about ministry, the future, church and other random topics I find helpful as a church leader, check out my newsletter, on the Rise. It's my once per week Friday newsletter that gets sent directly to your inbox every single week. And it's totally free. If you want to start receiving on the Rise, along with over 100,000 other leaders every single week, visit ontherisenewsletter.com for free. You can sign up up today. So when you sign up, I'll send you a sample newsletter right away. You can get an instant taste of what it's like. If it isn't for you, you can unsubscribe at any time. That's ontherisenewsletter.com to get curated content about ministry, culture, the future, and more. One of my favorite things to do every week. I don't want you to miss it.